Support provided by The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and City of Saint Paul Cultural STAR.

Jovan C. Speller and Andy DuCett’s Conservatory provides a space of comfort and community in the depths of winter, but also a place to share the realities of the surrounding climate. Surrounded on all sides by solid ice, a thriving greenhouse garden wedged between two buildings in an alley in downtown Saint Paul will flourish with hundreds of deeply hued plants this winter. Black cone flowers, velvet petunias, mondo grass, coleus, and more will fill the space. Visitors inside will hear the amplified cracks and thuds of the otherwise imperceptibly shifting environment around them, thanks to contact microphones placed in the ice. This physically immersive and visually captivating experience is designed to center Black life. Speller and DuCett will invite artists from Minnesota who identify as Black to submit work created during the uprisings to further highlight methods of survival and show how innovation and creativity can thrive. Those pieces, as well as a virtual experience of the greenhouse, will be shared through an interactive WebXR component that will allow the work to live on long after the ice has melted. Listen to artists Jovan C. Speller and Andy DuCett discuss the work during its early development in this podcast episode.